Learning should feel safe, professional and easy to speak up about.

1. Our safeguarding commitment

Silicon Academy is operated by David Oshikowa Akowe, sole trader, at 1 Cotton Close, Dagenham, Essex RM9 4HN, United Kingdom. Children and young people using Silicon must be treated with dignity, respect and appropriate professional boundaries.

Safeguarding means taking reasonable steps to protect children from maltreatment and other harm, including risks that arise online. We will take concerns seriously, keep records proportionate and secure, and refer concerns to the appropriate external safeguarding or law-enforcement route where required.

2. How to report a safeguarding concern

Email contact@siliconacademy.co.uk with the subject Safeguarding concern. The safeguarding contact is David Oshikowa Akowe.

Please provide only the information needed to understand the concern: who is at risk, what happened or was observed, when it happened, and any immediate safety issue. Do not email or upload sexual images of a child or other illegal material.

If a child may be at risk of abuse or neglect, a concern can also be reported directly to the child's local authority children's social care team. Online sexual abuse or grooming can be reported through the CEOP Safety Centre.

3. Silicon Studio: one-to-one lesson safety

Studio is designed for private teaching rooms, not social networking. The following rules apply to every live lesson involving a learner under 18:

• Communication must remain education-focused, respectful and age-appropriate.
• Tutors must not pressure a learner to move conversations to private social media, personal messaging accounts or other unapproved channels.
• Sexual, romantic, exploitative, threatening, discriminatory or humiliating conduct is prohibited.
• Tutors and learners must not request or share unnecessary home addresses, financial details, passwords or intimate personal information.
• Screen sharing, uploaded resources, chat and whiteboard content must be suitable for the lesson and the learner's age.
• No participant may make a secret recording or screenshot of a learner. Silicon recording is disabled by default; any future authorised recording requires a separate lawful and safeguarding process.
• If a tutor becomes concerned about a learner's safety, they should stop normal teaching where necessary, record the concern factually and follow the applicable safeguarding escalation route.

For self-serve one-to-one Studio lessons involving a learner under 16, the responsible adult arranging the tuition should know about and consent to the lesson. Organisations may use their own documented consent process. For learners aged 16 or 17, adult involvement should be considered in light of the learner's circumstances and the safeguarding risk.

4. Tutors, schools and organisations

Silicon can be used as software by independent tutors, schools and tutoring organisations. Those providers remain responsible for the suitability, identity checks, safer recruitment, supervision, training and safeguarding arrangements for the people they supply to teach learners.

If Silicon directly supplies a tutor in the future, that tutor must complete the safeguarding and suitability checks required by Silicon before teaching children. Platform access may be suspended while a serious safety concern is assessed.

An organisation's safeguarding policy may add stricter requirements. Where that happens, the stricter safety requirement should be followed unless it conflicts with law.

5. What Silicon does when a concern is raised

We do not try to conduct our own criminal or social-care investigation. We will normally:

1. make a factual record of the concern and any action taken;
2. take proportionate steps to protect the learner or restrict platform access where needed;
3. preserve relevant information securely and limit access to people who need it for safeguarding;
4. seek advice from or refer to the appropriate local authority children's social care team, designated officer or police where the circumstances require it; and
5. cooperate with lawful safeguarding and law-enforcement enquiries.

Safeguarding information may need to be shared without consent where this is necessary and lawful to protect a child or another person. We will share only what is relevant and necessary.

6. Online safety

Online risks can involve harmful content, harmful contact, unsafe conduct and commercial exploitation. Silicon's product design therefore aims to keep learner accounts private, avoid public learner profiles, disable geolocation, avoid behavioural advertising, and keep live Studio rooms permission-controlled.

Users must not use Silicon to groom, bully, harass, exploit, radicalise, sexually pressure or otherwise harm another person. Suspected illegal activity may be reported to the appropriate authorities.

7. Safeguarding records and privacy

Safeguarding records can contain highly sensitive information. They are kept separately or access-restricted where practicable, retained only as long as needed for safeguarding and legal purposes, and shared on a need-to-know basis. See the Privacy notice and our Young people's privacy guide.

8. Review and accountability

This policy is reviewed at least annually and after a significant safeguarding incident or material change to Studio. Before Silicon directly provides one-to-one tuition to children at scale, the operator will complete appropriate safeguarding training, determine DBS eligibility for relevant roles, and maintain the current local referral contacts needed for safeguarding concerns.

Questions about this policy can be sent to contact@siliconacademy.co.uk.